Wellington
Perhaps the main ‘problem’ with the majority of the companies that make up the
They’re not about fashion, or coffee, or rugby, and 90% of the revenue earned by these clevercompanies is from easy-to-miss exports. If they were in the USA or Germany or China, they'd befeted.
Even though the ICT software/services, high tech manufacturing and biotechnology companies thatmake up the ‘Technology Investment Network 100’ had record revenues of $7 billion last year,many New Zealanders would be hard-pressed to name half a dozen of them. (The TIN100 report is
Which is a pity, because in a time of economic tightness, the top 100 (there’s also a second100) grew revenues by 5%, and lifted employee numbers by 6% to 30,000.
One of the reasons for such strong performance is that R&D spend by these companies is 5% oftotal sales. At the same time they’re selling stuff, they’re getting the next products ready forthe market as well.
And there must be faith in this strategy – R&D employee numbers grew by 6% in thesecompanies.
For TIN100 principal sponsor,
IRL
(about to become high-techHQ), the statistic that R&D partnerships with universities and CRIs by these companies grew from13% from 7% must be heartening. As IRL’s commercialisation manager
TIN100 managing director Greg Shanahan said one of the features of companies doing well in exports, is how they’re using Australia as aspringboard for initial large growth, and leaping to the rest of the world from there.
There’s a heck of a lot of good stuff happening in and by these companies says Shanahan.
“People just aren’t aware of it,” he says.
“If there’s a real plea, talk about your successes locally. That will build the desire ofstudents to study science, to be entrepreneurs. The trouble is, most of these companies areinvisible apart from this forum [TIN100].”